In This I Find You Again If there is truth to be found let someone find it. The yellow rose rests in its jar. Day and night it looks out through the glass at the world of altered lines, sensing, perhaps, beauty through its failure to prevent fading. Each morning I wake and think of […]

“there’s a certain quality of this land
it allows your heart to fall back and rest
a slowing that opens up the senses to a distinctively mannered rhythm

it’s the ease of waking up to light leaking through lace
something being brought out of you — something that perhaps is always there
but stays quiet when you’re constantly spinning your wheels

here it’s glass mugs and marbled plates
moonshine in the cupboard and apple fritters on the counter

it’s wall to wall woodblock prints in the studio
a prism of pastels and paints
and sketches offering a glimpse of things to come

it’s named and numbered bedrooms
their porcelain knobs opening up to distinct havens
each with a personality of its own

it’s an ocean of corn rising high above your head
and crunching gravel beneath old borrowed boots

sliding open a heavy metal door and breathing deep a mix of dust and hay
stepping inside the horses’ quarters before eyes adjust to tenuous shadows

it’s cows in the pasture calling out like a pickup truck
and a murder of crows squawking somewhere off in the trees

it’s climbing up hay bails and hiking up hills
walking through the zigzag paths of dragonflies and monarchs gone by

it’s looking out over the land from the highest hill it’s got, sitting on outspread coats

there’s a mix of old and new here
dusty books find their place on the shelf while the writing of another is underway

prints are poised beneath glass and frame while the outline of the next is carved

cows groan for their young in the hills as the soy beans dry gold for harvest

it’s our breath falling in sync for the first time
the pulse of our hearts beginning the tune of a rhythmic beat
cardinals diving past in pairs
our eyes shyly locked on each other
noticing something we hadn’t before

it’s not about finding something here
it’s about drinking in that golden light like fuel for the thing that’s already been born inside of you — that thing you’ve started but aren’t sure you’ll ever complete

it’s hard
and it’s beautiful
but there’s nothing for you to prove

sink back into your own skin
lean over the thing
and let it be born

because right now, this moment,
it’s all part of it
we’re all in the midst of the painstaking, glorious process”

“Is there a language more simple, more pure, more lacking in hypocrisy than tears, the language without words and without lines? Each element of it is a painful cry, the cry of a desiring lover.

Isn’t it true that the eyes express the truth more than the tongue? Aren’t tears the most beautiful of poems and the least twisted of loves? Don’t they reflect the most consuming of faiths, the warmest of desires and the most fevered of feelings? Aren’t they the purest form of speak­ing and the most subtle form of love? These are mixed all in one heart of love. They mix together, fuse and form a warm drop. This they name a tear.” -Ali Shariati, “Fatima is Fatima”